Dance in Western Europe, from the 17th to the 19th century

Pas de Zephyr: Two More Versions

I recently gave a paper on dancing on the London stage during the regency period. During my research, I encountered Monsieur Albert, a dancer and dancing master I had heard of but knew little about. He wrote a treatise on ballroom dancing L’Art de danser à la ville et à la cour, published in Paris in 1834. He, too, includes the pas de Zephyr among the steps he suggests for use in the contredanse française or quadrille.

Albert also describes the contre-temps en avant, which closely resembles the early 18th-century step of the same name except that it finishes with an assemblé (which seems not to be included in the pas de Zephyr). He apparently uses the term balancé to denote a sequence of steps as well as the balancé step itself. His version of the pas de Zephyr is very different from those of Payne, Strathy, Mason and Costa, for which I transcribed the descriptions in an earlier post.

There is yet another version of the pas de Zephyr, described by J. H. Gourdoux-Daux in his treatise De l’art de la danse. The step presumably appears in the first edition, published in Paris in 1811, although I have only been able to consult the third edition of 1823. Gourdoux-Daux says:

There is a temps de cuisse in modern ballet technique, which may well be the descendant of the step Gourdoux-Daux describes. As can be seen, his version of the pas de Zephyr is different from all the others.

So, what was the pas de Zephyr? Was it a pas composé, a complex individual step, or was it actually an enchaînement, a sequence of steps? Were the different versions drawn from the same source but then amended by individual dancing masters to suit the needs of their own pupils? Was that source perhaps a short variation performed on stage by a leading male dancer, whom many of the teachers (if not their pupils) may have seen? I confess to being baffled by the pas de Zephyr! More research, practical as well as academic, is obviously needed.